Letters for Literary Ladies
To Which is Added, an Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification

Maria Edgeworth's first published work (1795), presenting a staunch defence of women's education in a dramatic series of fictionalised letters.

Maria Edgeworth (Author)

9781108018876, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 August 2010

212 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.2 cm, 0.28 kg

One of the foremost authors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) made the project of women's education the pillar of her career. Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), her first published work, takes up this question in earnest, offering a staunch defence of women's intellectual training and an impassioned warning against its neglect. The first two letters likely draw from an exchange between Richard Edgeworth, Maria's father, and his friend Thomas Day, presenting arguments for and against educating young women in the sciences and philosophy. The 'Letters of Julia and Caroline' illustrate this debate in epistolary form, dramatising both sides of the argument. The final 'Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification' serves as a wry critique of women's own self-deceptions. Complex and provocative, Letters for Literary Ladies demonstrates Edgeworth's early exploration of the subject that would define her career.

Letter from a gentleman to his friend, upon the birth of a daughter, with the answer
Letters of Julia and Caroline
Essay on the noble science of self-justification.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]